An electronic voting machine maker is battling a voter rights advocate in Washington state who wants to force the company to reveal the machines' software blueprint.

Paul Lehto, an Everett, Washington, lawyer has filed suit against Sequoia Voting Systems Inc., a privately held company based in Oakland, California, and Snohomish County, where his practice is located, arguing Sequoia's contract should be voided.

The lawsuit, filed last week in King County Superior Court, pits the right of a company to guard proprietary information against the public's need to know how elections are tabulated, Lehto said.

''These are entities that are providing the most central governmental function that we have, the counting of the vote,'' Lehto said Tuesday. ''If they are not only controlling that process but purporting to own it, then that is a serious problem.''

You go, Paul!

And for Sequoia's part:

Alfie Charles, a spokesman for Sequoia, said the underlying code, or software blueprint, for the company's voting machines was not disclosed because it is considered a trade secret and its release could compromise security.

''Electronic voting (machines) performed extremely well. ... They provided certainty in ballot results in places where they haven't had it in the past,'' Charles said.

Yes, we'd hate to violate the "trade secret" for counting the votes in the world's most important democracy. And paid for by your tax dollars to boot! Shame on these companies.

Which reminds us, if you haven't already, now is a great time to Send an Email to the Voting Machine Companies letting them know you've had enough! The Velvet Revolution webletter is ready to go, you just need to sign it and send! It'll take you 30 seconds!

(DISCLOSURE: Paul Lehto is also a legal advisor for VelvetRevolution.us, a Voting Rights and Election Reform organization co-founded by BRAD BLOG's Brad Friedman.)

The drumbeat of the pro-democracy movement in America (who could have ever imagined there'd be a need for one in this country?!) seems to be growing louder as more and more Mainstream Media folks get into the game!

Worst of all, computer voting machines deny critics, reporters, attorneys general and historians the chance to recheck results --- which undermines the confidence any citizen can have in what are billed as free and fair elections.

Indeed. Clearly there are still a few in the MSM who get it. It may just take them a while to figure it out.

Moreover, Steinbeck --- for the first time that we know of --- mentions the Clint Curtis / Tom Feeney vote-rigging scandal in the pages of The Herald, along with a litany of reasons for returning to paper ballots [emphasis added]:

Paper ballots can be forged or lost, for example, but attempting to swing elections using such methods almost surely requires a team of conspirators, and likely would leave a trail of evidence. With computerized voting machines, a hacked line of code can instantly alter thousands of votes.

We may never find out what Walden O'Dell, CEO of touch-screen voting machine manufacturer Diebold Inc., meant when he told Republicans in a 2003 fund-raising letter that he was ``committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president [Bush] next year.''

We may never learn the truth behind the affidavit of computer programmer Clinton Curtis alleging then-Florida Rep. Tom Feeney --- now a U.S. congressman --- asked the software company for which he worked in 2000 to design an undetectable computer program for flipping touch-screen machine votes.

We may never know for sure if Nov. 2 exit polls that projected John Kerry winning several states he ultimately lost were themselves biased --- or whether they were accurate, exposing tampered election results. The victors, after all, never question the score --- or the scoring.

And tomorrow, The BRAD BLOG has learned, syndicated Tribune Columnist, Robert Koehler will also go on record about the pitfalls of E-Voting, a condemnation of what went wrong in 2004, and some terrific coverage about those of us who are out there trying to fight the good fight to save our endangered democracy...even while the rest of the MSM continues to yawn.

Perhaps things are changing, however. We'll see. But at The BRAD BLOG, hope always springs eternal. And so we press on...

Three years after spending $24.5 million to install a controversial touch-screen voting system, Miami-Dade County elections officials have been asked to study scrapping the system in favor of paper-based balloting.

The request from County Manager George Burgess follows the recent resignation of Elections Supervisor Constance Kaplan and the revelation that hundreds of votes in recent elections hadn't been counted.

In a letter sent yesterday by Congressman John Conyers, the ranking minority member of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, to former-President Jimmy Carter, Conyers has expressed his "strong opposition" to the "conflicting interest" of having Bush/Cheney loyalist, James A. Baker, III serve as the Co-Chair of a recently seated blue-ribbon commission set to investigate Election 2004!

Carter has been named as Co-Chair, along with Baker, on the secretly convened and recently announced commission to investigate problems in Election 2004 and to make recommendations on changes needed to improve accuracy, confidence, transparency and inclusion in the American Electoral System.

For many of us, Mr. Baker will be forever remembered for his ultimately successful efforts to shut down the counting of votes in the 2000 Florida election and I am concerned that his involvement in that election may present a conflict with the goals and initiatives of your Commission.

In the letter, Conyers also calls upon Carter to include true Voting Rights and Election Reform advocacy groups such as Velvet Revolution on the commission which is currently staffed instead by politicos and Bush/Cheney/RNC cronies.

ALSO:The BRAD BLOG can now confirm that Mark F. (Thor) Hearne, II, the National Attorney for Bush/Cheney '04 Inc. and leader of the recently invented, phony GOP front group calling themselves the "non-partisan" American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR) has been seated on the Academic Advisory board for this commission!

The fix, as we've been warning for some time, is clearly --- and dangerously --- in with this commission!

UPDATE: The letter from Conyers to Carter is now posted here [PDF]. As well, Conyers has just blogged on the topic, and added even stronger language for his concern of Baker on this commission. From the just posted item at ConyersBlog:

How can an individual who played a critical role in the disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of Floridians now co-chair a Commission which should have as its mission ensuring that every vote counts?

This is of great concern to me and should be of great concern to every single person who cares about this important issue. Online activists have been taking a close look at this issue. Please keep an eye on it.

...MORE WILL BE COMING ON BRAD BLOG CONCERNING THE BLUE-RIBBON COMMISSION, ITS MAKE-UP, AND THE INSIDIOUS GAMING OF ITS MANDATE...STAY TUNED...

For more information on the "non-partisan" tax-exempt ACVR scam and the snakeoil salesmen who invented it, Bush/Cheney '04 National General Counsel Mark F. "Thor" Hearne and RNC Communications Director Jim Dyke, please see BRAD BLOG's full Special Coverage of the "American Center for Voting Rights" at http://www.BradBlog.com/ACVR.

The title for this item comes from Lucy Morgan's own Jan 8th article in the St. Petersburg Times headlined "Aside from being wrong, AP had Jeb story right" wherein the Pulitzer Prize winner and SP Times Tallahassee Bureau Chief takes the AP to task for getting a single and small point wrong in a story on Jeb Bush's entourage. Also for being less than willing to cop to it.

Small point or not, we appreciate Morgan's attention to detail, accuracy and potentially misleading information...At least in stories written by others. If only she held herself to the same strict standards.

In her own now-ironic words of just three months ago...

Sometimes it's hard to set the record straight.

That's because it's hard for some people to admit mistakes.
...
In this world of journalism, seems to me we are getting awfully thin of skin when we cannot admit we made a mistake.

We all make them.

Indeed. It remains to be seen how thick Ms. Morgan's skin truly is. Though a full read of the article from which we quoted above might come as a stunning surprise to those who read our full piece yesterday on Morgan's reportorial transgressions on her blown Clint Curtis scoop.

Perhaps, as she mentioned while snipping at us on the phone (see the previous article) she really does have "two heads" after all. One for pondering the sins of others, and one for ignoring her own.

Our standard at the St. Petersburg Times is simple: to get things right the first time. This being a human endeavor, we sometimes fall short.

When this happens in the news report, our policy is to correct factual errors, promptly and prominently. Readers who spot factual errors are encouraged to contact the news department, by telephone, letter or e-mail, so that we can address the mistake.

In print, our news sections list their phone numbers and e-mail addresses, either at the top of the section's front page or in a directory on page 2 of the section. Readers may also call our main City Desk at (727) 893-8215 between 8 a.m. and 11 p.m., or send an e-mail to corrections@sptimes.com.

Readers who wish to comment upon our coverage, rather than to correct some error of fact, are invited to submit letters to the editor. The ?Share your opinions'' passage on our editorial page offers guidance for potential correspondents.

For months supporters and critics alike have been requesting that Clint Curtis take a polygraph test to help shore up (or debunk) the veracity of his explosive sworn allegations that then-Florida State Senator (and Speaker of the House) Tom Feeney, now a U.S. Congressman from Florida's 24th District, asked Curtis to create an electronic vote-rigging software prototype back in 2000 when Curtis worked at Yang Enterprises Inc. (YEI) where Feeney was also the corporate counsel and registered lobbyist in his "non-conflicting" day job while working as Florida's Speaker of the House.

While Morgan was handed this rather hot and exclusive scoop over a month ago, just after Curtis took and passed the test on March 3rd, her investigative work since then on this admittedly complicated and very broad case --- stretching back through at least four years of public and private paper trails --- resulted in an astonishingly amateurish piece which serves as a fine piece of pro-Feeney propoganda, a smackdown of the courageous and so-far verified claims of Clint Curtis and --- finally, though less importantly --- a slap in the face to the hard work we've toiled at here for over five months.

Her article, inappropriately and condescendingly headlined "Blogs spin tale of computers, conspiracies" is loaded with countless points of misleading information, crucial omissions and out and out inaccuracies.

Given our (apparently overly generous) offer to fact-check and/or advise and/or supply Morgan with any and all of the copious documentation and public records and hard evidence we've amassed over our past six months of reporting on this matter coupled with Morgan's impressive credentials and experience, we were somewhat stunned to read the fruits of her efforts on Saturday when the story finally appeared in The SP Times.

As we are still somewhat at a disadvantage by being on the road for the moment (still in Nashville at the National Election Reform Conference), we'll have to do our best to speak to Morgan's many unfortunate errors and lack of apparent journalistic standards without access to our complete file of evidence. Nonetheless, we'll do our best to point out what we would have pointed out to Morgan had she bothered to run any of this by us before going to press.

Given also that she found it necessary to include us in the story for inexplicable reasons --- other than perhaps to try and discredit the entire affair as a "conspiracy theory" of some sort --- it seems as though it would have been appropriate to check many of these facts with us and/or at least give us the opportunity to comment on several of the unsupported charges she makes in her piece.

But alas, that seems to be the way of the Mainstream Media these days; Belittle and discredit the stories that they should have been reporting in the first place by suggesting that a story presented on a web log couldn't possibly hold the veracity of something reported by the MSM.

On that note, we'll simply mention that after over six months of investigating and reporting on the Clint Curtis story, we've not once had to issue a notable retraction or correction to any of our work. Whereas one single article from Morgan includes enough misinformation for an entire column's worth of retractions, corrections and clarifications.

We had hoped to extend the courtesy to Morgan that she didn't feel necessary to extend to either Curtis or us in order to give her the opportunity to explain herself and her many omissions, misleads and apparent lack of both "balance" and fact-checking in her story.

Morgan's response to our invitation to comment today: "I have no interest in commenting on your story, you can publish that I have two heads if you want."

We have no interest in publishing that Morgan has two heads, since that would be misleading and untruthful as far as we can tell. We do have an interest in publishing facts however, in a fair way, while correcting those who seem to display a problem in doing so themselves.

So to that end, let's take a look at a few of the most egregious distortions, errors, misleads and omissions in Morgan's unfortunate article...

(NOTE: Blogged by Brad on the road from the National Election Reform Conference in Nashville)

After many months and many requests and many challenges from both critics and Mainstream Media types, The St. Petersburg Timesis reporting --- and The BRAD BLOG can confirm --- that Clint Curtis took a polygraph test on March 3rd...and passed!

The lie-detector test, administered to Curtis by Tim Robinson, the retired chief polygraph operator for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, found that the Florida whistleblowing software designer who has charged in a sworn affidavit that he was asked by U.S. Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) to create an electronic vote-rigging software prototype in 2000, was indeed found to be truthful in all of his responses!

The article which breaks the news of Curtis' polygraph test was written by Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter and Times Tallahassee Bureau Chief, Lucy Morgan.

Despite her impressive credentials, the month-long exclusive access to Curtis' test-results that Morgan was given, and the full cooperation of The BRAD BLOG along with our months of reporting and materials acquired during our continuing investigation, she still managed to publish a number of errors and more than a few key omissions.

As well, in the name of "balance" (the phoney-baloney concept invented by charlatans to give themselves a chance they don't deserve), Morgan manages to use several derisive quotes from Feeney, but not a single quote from Curtis.

Granted, the story of this entire sordid affair is a broad one, stretching back at least 4 years with a miles-long paper trail to accompany it. Still, we'd expect a bit more responsibility from a Pulitzer Prize winner. Especially one who has had so much time to work on the story, gather information for it, and enjoy full and unfettered access for interviews with all of the key participants in the story.

We knew there was trouble afoot from the first beat as the story was headlined "Blogs Spin Tale of Conspiracy, Computers". Which prompts us to wonder what headline The Times might have used when covering Woodward and Bernstein's series of Watergate articles in 1972: "Washington Post Spins Tale of Conspiracy, Cover-up"?

We're currently at the National Election Reform Conference in Nashville (where folks have been incredibly supportive, including Election Reform All-Stars such as Green Party Candidate David Cobb and Free Press writer/editor and attorney Bob Fritrakis, and the delightful Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney! All have had nothing but tremendous things to say about BRAD BLOG and VELVET REVOLUTION --- and on video tape at that!)Though it makes it difficult for now to respond in full to the errors and omissions in Morgan's story. Or even to get her responses to them.

We will do so --- with an update --- at the first available opportunity. Given what's going on out here, it may be a day or so...we'll see...

Pennsylvania officials Thursday barred three counties from using a touch-screen voting system that apparently contributed to an unusual number of uncounted votes in the November election.

Pennsylvania Secretary of State Pedro Cortes said officials do not believe the undercount would have changed the outcome of any races in Mercer, Beaver and Greene counties.

Still, he said, "there are enough problems with this system that in our estimation it's in the best interests of the voters" to stop using them immediately.

The decertification of the UniLect Patriot voting machine came barely a month before this year's May 17 municipal primary election.

This announcement comes as the result of a probe of problems with Electronic Voting Machines in the Keystone State which began in early January (as reported here).

UniLect is the California company that manufactured the voting machines in Carteret County, N.C. that lost some 4,500 votes entirely last November 2nd resulting in the need for an unprecedented re-vote in the county. They are also one of the nine major American Voting Machine companies currently targeted by Velvet Revolution's "Divestiture for Democracy" campaign calling on the companies to voluntarily implement standards of transparency and accountability with their machines or face a massive and sustained divestiture/boycott by the American People.

Just over two weeks later, Ukraine's own fixed election, and the Bush administration's infuriatingly hypocritical outrage brought more condemnation from Pravda, this time as they chastised the American administration for having the gall to question anyone else's election after our own --- which was even more askew than Ukraine's. Our item headlined "Home to Roost - or, Democracies That Live in Glass Houses" covered the continuing degradation in esteem from our once-promising Russian ally.

And today, it's The Moscow Times who joins the World's America Hating Party in a damning article suggesting the game is over and the forces of Democracy in the previously-Free World have lost.

UPDATE: Chris Floyd's column The Big Fix, which was published in The Moscow Times, is now available to subscribers only, but you can read it on Chris' blog. Click here.

Unlike their compatriots in the American Media, The Times covers the Clint Curtis story in their article by way of referencing much of what The BRAD BLOG has reported on that sorry affair. They've even beaten the American Media at reporting on the latest Baker Commission Blue-Ribbon "Election Reform" fix which America can now look forward to --- even if they're not paying attention --- unless something is done about it.

The rest of the world recognizes news, and what it may mean for this country and the world. Even if the American Media does not.

Though that may change a bit over the next few days as a major American Newspaper may indeed be jumping into the Clint Curtis fray. We'll do our best to keep you abreast of those developements even as we're otherwise occupado down here in Nashville...Stay Tuned...

All 55 Republican senators say they have never seen the Terri Schiavo political talking-points memo that Democrats say was circulated among Republicans during the floor debate over whether the federal government should intervene to prolong her life.

A survey by The Washington Times found that every Republican said the memo was not crafted or distributed by him or her. Every one of them said he or she had not seen it until the memo was the subject of speculation in major news organs, particularly ABC News and The Washington Post.

The Timesarticle disinformation even goes so far as to suggest that it was Senate minority leader, Harry Reid's office that was responsible for the now-infamous talking points memo!

Counsel to GOP Senator Wrote Memo On SchiavoMartinez Aide Who Cited Upside For Party Resigns

The legal counsel to Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) admitted yesterday that he was the author of a memo citing the political advantage to Republicans of intervening in the case of Terri Schiavo, the senator said in an interview last night.

Brian H. Darling, 39, a former lobbyist for the Alexander Strategy Group on gun rights and other issues, offered his resignation and it was immediately accepted, Martinez said.

Even the phony Republican media machine --- which is by now quite sophisticated, smart, insidious and powerful --- could not keep the truth from coming out about this one. Though we have a feeling that today's Post story may not receive quite as much coverage from Rush and friends as did yesterday's phony Times piece.

We wish we could reveal to you all that we know about how the phony Rightwing press actually works hand-in-hand with the high-level politicos it supports. We've learned quite a bit, for example, about last week's "story" attempting to shore up/legitimize the ACVR which made it's way into the GOP Propoganda via the phony Cybercast News Service last week. For various reasons, at this time, we are unable to report all we know about that here. Suffice to stay, the story that CNS ran was a setup which ran, the way that it eventually did, at the instructions of top RNC officials.

If you have any doubt about the sophisticated propoganda machine being run by the GOP, any question in your mind that perhaps it's all just some crazy "conspiracy theory" being floated by the Left, hopefully the illustrative comparison of stories on the Schiavo Memo will end any doubt that you may have. It's real. It's powerful. It's sophisticated. It's insidious. And it's all meant to decieve you, the good people of America, in a cynical and dangerous way. And it's been working for some time.

He's preaching the spread of democracy all over the world, and especially in the Middle East. Sounds great, doesn't it? He wants you to think so! But he doesn't want you to realize this: George Bush [or his inner circle] will decide which governments are democratic, which are autocratic; which will stand and which will fall. And the decisions will have nothing to do with democracy.

One case in point was mentioned recently by fellow guest-blogger Jaime in his excellent item, News You Might Have Missed. Here's another example for your consideration:

Pro-Democracy forces in a Middle-Eastern country turned out more than ten percent of that nation's population out for massive and peaceful demonstrations. It happened a week and a half ago, in Bahrain. Did you hear or read anything about it? Don't feel badly if you missed it; the way it was played in the major media, it's almost as if they wanted you to miss it!